


New Process

by kittydesade



Category: Soldier (1998)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-25
Updated: 2010-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-14 02:44:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Todd does not think like the colonists do. He doesn't register injury like they do, but he feels the ways he is somehow wrong nonetheless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Process

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Neery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neery/gifts).



The room was full of silence. Sounds received and interpreted to be unimportant, harmless things and designated silence. It was a small room and the radius of perception, auditory, was likewise small. But the probability that there was a threat still on board the ship when they were an hour off-planet was vanishingly small. No need to patrol.

Todd sat on the edge of the bed and waited for further orders. Not that he needed orders, specifically, now. He had been acting without orders for some time, at least, acting without direct orders. The implied responsibility of his new position was to protect the people on board the ship. Before that, it had been to protect the community. The colonists were peaceful, they had very few threats on the garbage dump planet, but then the incursion had come and he had to protect the community. He didn't speculate on the why of it. He protected. He defended. He fought. He was a weapon, pointed and fired as his designated wielder chose.

 _You must think about something?_

Thought processes were inefficient. Organic thought processes were inefficient, even the way he processed external stimuli and the resultant data was inefficient, took time. His processes were damaged by the trauma he had suffered from use. A self-diagnostic prior to landing on their new home planet was warranted.

List of injuries, physical, from the battles survived thus far. List of injuries specifically to the head and spinal area. Enclosure in the garbage scow and subsequent disposal on the garbage planet. Encounter with the civilian population of colonists, assimilation. They had degraded his ability to think efficiently, he realized. They lived by what was right and just, rather than what was practical, applicable, or probable.

"You should eat."

He had registered her presence when she opened the door and leaned in the frame but determined that his self-diagnostic was the higher priority. Now he had determined the cause of the degradation of his efficiency within his internal processes and he could interact with her.

"I don't require food at this time, Sir." His eyes focused on her.

"You don't require it, but you should eat. The kids want to see you."

A thought half-formed in his mind before tripping a process fault and repeating itself several times. The kids want to the kids want to the kids want to the kids

"I don't require food at this time, Sir." Logic. Practicality. He jolted himself out of the repetition by returning to that fact. His body did not require food at this time. He was adequately nourished and provided with glucose to

"You don't have to eat. Just come sit with us."

She hadn't asked him things like this when they were on the planet. In the colony. His mind searched for a reason before he realized that there was a rational explanation after all. "Do you require my assistance?" She appeared exhausted. In the absence of any clear leader she may have stepped up to take charge, if no one else had. With no training and no experience, it would be difficult for her.

"No. I just thought you might want to come sit with Nicholas and the others."

Want. Want was a dangerous word. Want was a subversive word, it caused many of the wars he had been deployed to fight. He had been trained to avoid that word, and sidestepped it now. "Yes, Sir."

"Don't…" She stopped him with a hand on his arm despite the fact that he could have snapped it off at the wrist.

(-- _why would you think something like that?_ \--)

The shadow of that thought came and was gone. He stopped and looked at her, asking for clarification.

Sandra shook her head. "I don't want you to do it because I said so. Do you want to?"

He still didn't understand the question.

"If you want, you can stay in here until we land. I can bring you your meals in here…"

"I should patrol the ship." Just in case. Not only for threats of intruders, but also because they were unfamiliar with the structure and workings of the ship, or if they were not no one had told him otherwise. He was familiar enough to keep them sustained and on course until they landed. Therefore he needed to patrol the ship.

She didn't like that answer, though. "You need to rest. You just fought…" her eyes tracked over him, evaluating his fitness for his duties. Her mouth frowned, disapproving of what she saw. Her voice stress pattern did not agree with the first two observations, but he could not reconcile all three factors. "I don't know how many men, eighteen, you said? You just fought … you were injured, you need to rest. We can take care of the ship."

He didn't know if that was the truth or an overestimation of their abilities to prevent him from straining and potentially further injuring himself. She was right, though, that he could not afford to be incapacitated. They could not afford him to be incapacitated.

(-- _you have to take care of them_ \--)

He heard that thought. He didn't understand why he heard it. It wasn't his, it belonged to the same Todd with lacrimation defects and rash decisions made for imperfect reasons. Her hand was still on his arm, and it felt cool. He didn't understand that either.

"I should…" take care of the ship take care of the ship take care of the ship take care.

She started to push him back towards the bunk. "You should rest. You've done more than enough for us, and you've been through a lot. That's not going to go away, no matter how… well trained you are. You need time to get used to things, and … I'm sorry we weren't able to give you that."

He could have stopped her. He could have moved her, with or without damage. He didn't.

They sat on the bed, Todd towering over Sandra even seated, even with not so much height difference between them, he simply towered. His broad shoulders and his straight back gave the impression of looming even when he was sitting on a bunk with a ceiling that was too low for almost anyone's comfort. And he didn't say anything. She had given him no orders nor required him to speak, so he didn't.

She tucked her arm through his after a minute and thirteen seconds. "We shouldn't have thrown you out, before. We should have remembered that these things take time, a lot of time. When you… you grow up with habits like that, when you don't know any other way, it's hard to believe that anything can be different."

He didn't know what she meant. The words were strung together and made sense but how they applied to him was unclear. As was the reason for his chest to hurt and feel constricted like that. Was it related to this lacrimation defect that he seemed to now suffer from?

(-- _everyone has to change including you and her_ \--)

Todd seized on that thought with the speed and brutal determination of any assault on a planet or a command carrier. Everyone had to change. Adapting to your environment was inevitable, if he was to survive among these people and they were to survive him, he would have to adapt. That, both he and the little voice in his head he only dimly recognized as his own, both of them could agree on.

If one of the others suffered this lacrimation and chest constriction, what would they call it?

Crying, they called it crying.

He frowned, puzzled, and looked at her as another … tear, they were called tears, and the term applied to him as well if this was to be accomplished. Another tear rolled down his face. She seemed, if upset, not concerned or in a panic. As though it were something she had expected and knew how to accommodate for or fix. Which meant he could be fixed. That was good.

"It'll take time," she said, in a strange way of addressing his thoughts when he hadn't said anything. Her fingertips reached up to his face, slowly, so he had time to register her as not a threat and keep himself from reacting. "We need to learn how to be around you, and you need to learn how to be around us. But you're one of us now. No one's going to throw you away…"

Her fingertips brushed away the tears that fell. He slowed his breathing to measured inhalations and sighs, because his chest felt too tight for comfort or security. "This…" he started to say, then stopped. The words he needed to explain how he felt weren't there, how this made him deeply uncomfortable. How he didn't even know how to say what kind of discomfort he felt, like having an injury in a place that kept moving with pain that kept changing and symptoms that appeared and disappeared in seconds.

Sandra listened, but shook her head when he didn't continue. "I don't know… what I'm doing. I think we're all sort of feeling our way around in the dark. But I can promise you this, all right? I will try my best…" her words slowed to give them weight. "Not to hurt you. In any way. This is a safe place for you, Todd. This will be your safe place."

He nodded, jerky at first, and then smoother. "Base of operations, Sir," he corrected. Sort of. Safe space didn't translate in those words from her mouth to his mental map, but it was the closest equivalent he could think of. "Home base."

She smiled. It meant something to her, it was a good neutral ground to meet her on. "Home base. Yes." One word, home, her word. His word, base. They could live with that.


End file.
